The US is set to rejoin Unesco this month after a four-year absence from the global cultural and educational body that the country abandoned during the Donald Trump presidency over what his administration called “anti-Israeli bias”.
The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s reunion with the US came after a two-day special session held at the body’s headquarters in Paris.
Of Unesco’s 193 member states, 142 participated in Friday’s vote. Ten states voted against the US rejoining, including Russia, Belarus, Iran, North Korea and Nicaragua. China, which had become the organisation’s biggest financial backer in the absence of the US, also voted against readmittance.
US efforts to rejoin Unesco have been building since last year when the Joe Biden White House said within a $1.7tn spending bill that the administration would seek to rejoin the organisation in order to “counter Chinese influence”.
“I am encouraged and grateful that Unesco members have accepted the US proposal that will allow us to continue steps toward rejoining the organisation,” the American secretary of state Antony Blinken said in a statement.
The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, described the decision as “very good news”.
“If we are not engaged in international institutions, then we leave a void and lose an opportunity to advance American values and interests on the global stage,” she added.
Meanwhile, the UN’s director for the International Crisis Group, Richard Gowan, told CBS News on Tuesday: “The Biden administration has always made it clear that it is suspicious of China’s rising influence in the UN.
“Biden’s team believes that Trump ceded a lot of ground to China with its anti-UN attitude. The decision to rejoin Unesco is just the latest example of the US deciding it can do more to counter China by actively engaging in UN institutions than sitting on the sidelines.”
As a condition of readmission, the US will repay around $619m in unpaid dues, meet 22% of Unesco’s annual budget, and make contributions to programs supporting education access initiatives in Africa, Holocaust remembrance and journalists’ safety.
Beyond stepping up actions for Africa, Unesco said it would be able to increase its efforts toward gender equality, a strategic priority.
“With this return, Unesco will be in an even stronger position to carry out its mandate,” said Audrey Azoulay, Unesco’s director general.
“Unesco’s mandate – education, science, culture, freedom of information – is absolutely central to meeting the challenges of the 21st century. It is this centrality, as well as the easing of political tensions within the organisation and the initiatives launched in recent years, that have led the United States to initiate this return.”
Last month, the US acknowledged in a letter to Unesco that it noted the organisation’s “efforts to implement key management and administrative reforms, as well as its focus on decreasing politicized debate, especially on Middle East issues”.
The organisation in 2011 had voted to admit Palestine, which is not formally recognized by the US or Israel as a UN member state. The Barack Obama White House cut Unesco contributions, sending the US into owing millions in arrears to the organization.
Five years later, in 2016, the Unesco World Heritage Committee adopted a decision ruling that Israeli actions related to archaeology, tourism and freedom of movement in the Old City of Jerusalem contravened cultural heritage laws and practices.
US and Israeli officials complained that not including the full Jewish history in any decision about Jerusalem was equivalent to a denial of Jewish history.
In 2017, a year into the Trump presidency, the US cited “mounting arrears at Unesco, the need for fundamental reform in the organisation, and continuing anti-Israel bias at Unesco” as reasons for the decision.
The decision by Unesco to readmit the US, which has 24 properties inscribed on the world heritage list, is the second time it has left and rejoined since the organisation was founded in 1945.
In 1983, Ronald Reagan’s administration pulled the US out over what it saw as anti-Western bias. Unesco, it complained, “has extraneously politicized virtually every subject it deals with”.
“It has exhibited hostility toward a free society, especially a free market and a free press, and it has demonstrated unrestrained budgetary expansion,” the Reagan White House added.
But beneath that expressed rationale was frustration that Unesco, with an increasing number of members, no longer acted in consort with US foreign policy objectives.
“The countries which have the votes don’t pay the bill, and those who pay the bill don’t have the votes,” the US ambassador to the UN Jeane Kirkpatrick said at the time.
But in 2002, George W Bush’s administration negotiated readmittance as part of an effort to foster international goodwill to counter deep misgivings over the US “war on terror” in the Middle East.
Reuters contributed reporting.
